After they’d eaten and cleared away,
“Is Calum’s ‘grand plan’ becoming a bit clearer?” asked Sarah.
“I can sort of understand why Calum invested in the Salmon farms. It is a growth area, but some of these other businesses seem a bit weird to me,” said Jak as he reviewed the descriptions of the businesses that he’d left them both.
Sarah chuckled.
“Calum was always reluctant to say why he bought a business or put money into it. All he’d say was, ‘It is my money, and I can do what I want with it.’ The thing is… they were almost all loss-making before he took them over. Now? They are almost all making a profit. Maybe not a lot, but a profit is a profit… It is as if he were a magician and able to cast a spell, and within a year, the losses were gone, and profits were back. I never did find out what it was, but it helped him make an awful lot of money, unlike your father.”
“I can understand that. Money was part of the reason for the breakup between him and my part of the family. Their great-grandmother left them each half of her estate. Calum got the money, and my father got the businesses. The value of the businesses was almost equal to the cash, so it seemed to be in equal measures. My father had assumed that Calum would want to invest in the family business, which, at the time, needed lots of cash to improve its productivity. Calum just walked off with the money. He told me that he never had any intention of helping his brother out. There was bad blood between them from an early age. Calum was always blamed for his brother’s mistakes.”
Jak smiled.
“Dad was pretty pissed off. I later found out that she’d planned it all that way. Great-great-grandmother Flora McCloud was a feared woman who produced huge amounts of bootleg Whiskey and supplied speakeasies in Chicago, New York and Cincinnati. There are tales of her driving the trucks and using surplus WW1 tracked vehicles to avoid the cops by going off-road. My mother once said to me that Calum was more like her than my father,” said Jak.
“That explains a lot.”
“But it does not explain his investment of £100,000 in a Blacksmiths?” asked Jak.
Sarah laughed.
“I can answer that. We were out together in Galloway when something went wrong with the car’s suspension. Calum muttered something about a control arm. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the only place around was this old and very decrepit blacksmith’s forge. The old guy was able to fix the car by welding something. Calum always visited the place when he was close by and would chew the fat with the smith.He called it a meeting of minds. A year or so later, he invested the money to train a new smith as well as update the forge so that they could make more saleable items. The apprentice qualified last year and has since taken on a new apprentice. I would not look for a return on that money. Calum wrote it off in his mind the day after he’d given it, but he was more interested in keeping the skill alive than getting a return on his investment. He… He had a hard side to him with business, but it was by no means all about profit and only profit at the expense of everything else.”
“That is good to know. The last thing I would want to do would be to barge in and demand the money back. If I were my father, then that would be exactly what he’d do. Even one measly dollar out on a report would send him into a rage, even if the primary sums were in the millions.”
“What will your father do when he finds out about you inheriting from Calum?”
Jak shook his head.
“I would not want to be anywhere near him. His opinion of Calum is that of a charlatan, a grifter and a general no-good son of a bitch who can’t be trusted one inch. I’d fully expect him to get into that private jet of his and come over here, intending to take me home with him even if I don’t want to go. Intent is the word here. I don’t want to go, and I don’t think that he can make me. The last time we met, he treated me as if I was a High School Junior, let alone about to be the holder of an advanced degree. If he met you, he’d probably explode on the spot. He is a fully signed-up member of at least one white nationalist group and a large donor to some right-wing Political Action Groups.
Sarah smiled.
“That is very close to Calum’s opinion of your father with that addition of a bigot and racist.”
“That I will agree with. If I even looked at a girl who wasn’t pure white, he would go mad. Some of his political donations have gone to far, far-right candidates and groups. In 2016, he tried to make sure that I voted for Trump. I told him that who I voted for was between me and my maker. He even came up to Boston in late October to check on who I was going to vote for. He was pissed because I registered to vote there and de-registered back home. He knew because he was the chair of the local GOP association. I’d already voted in early voting, which pissed him off even more.”
“He sounds like a control freak. Calum was very much the opposite. He let me make my own mistakes and learn from them. He was always there when things went wrong, like a real parent should be.”
Jak saw this as an opportunity to change the direction of their conversation. After taking a deep breath, he said,
“It is clear to me from everything that I’ve read and what you have said that Calum wanted us to try to be a couple.”
Sarah tried to interrupt, but Jak put his hand up to stop her.
“At first, I thought that it was because you were black, and that would be a huge red flag to my father. Then, I began to see the real person that you are and basically, fuck my family. I fancy you. To be honest, I’ve never met someone who has a brain and looks as good as you. Sure, there were beautiful-looking girls at college, but many of them were there just for husband shopping, just like my mother did with my father. I would consider myself very lucky to have you in my life in any way, romantic or not. They wanted husbands who could offer them a life of luxury just like their mothers and their mothers before them. Working a day would be a day too much for them. They would shudder in horror at the thought of going off to Africa and working to make the lives of others better. For many of them, going to the Salon for their hair, nails and eyes, followed by visits to the country club, is their world. That and obeying their husbands. That is not the sort of life I ever wanted. I saw how it destroyed my mother.”
Jak swallowed hard before adding,
“If you don’t want it, then we will have to remain friends to carry out the plans that Calum laid out for us. But… being perfectly honest, and this is coming from a place of ignorance. There has been the odd moment when I feel like selling the whole thing or at least letting the people who have been running the show since his death carry on. Then, I would have a chance to at least try to get to know you as a real person and not Calum’s daughter. As much as Calum meant well by bringing us together, there is only so much he can do from beyond the grave. Isn’t it up to us to forge a future for ourselves, but never forgetting who enabled us to come together?”
Sarah sat silently for what seemed like minutes.
“I… I don’t know,” said Sarah.
Jak smiled.
“Much like me at the moment. This is all very strange to me. I feel like a fish out of water, then I see you again, and suddenly I have a purpose in my life.”
“What if I can’t live up to your expectations? It was often hard for me to do that with Calum. While he was pretty easy-going, he had standards, and I had to adhere to them even as a child. If I made mistakes, he’d come to my rescue and forgive me. If I did it again, then and only then would he get angry. I soon learned that it was him being him, and everything he did was to prepare me to run the company. Me… a poor farmer’s daughter from Kenya. He loved me unconditionally, and that meant a lot to me.”
“I’m not like that. It seems at first glance that Calum was not that unlike my father when it came to raising a child. Then you say or do something that tells a very different story. There were so many times that I had to be at an event just to show that he was a ‘good Christian family man’. I would be under strict orders to be seen and not heard. It was hard. One time, I accidentally spilt my soda down my white shirt. When I got home, I was given the strap because he thought that it made him look bad with his so-called friends.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Calum would have just given me a hug and made me wash my shirt if I’d have done that. He never raised a hand to me, nor did he raise his voice to me in public. I have to admit that I messed up quite a few times as a child. He forgave me. That was Calum.”
After another awkward silence, Jak said,
“What if we cut and ran? Sell up and start again without any ties to the past?” suggested Jak.
“You would do that?”
“I would if it meant that we could be together. As it stands, I’d be lucky to see you for more than a day at weekends if I had to base myself over in this out-of-the-way place in Argyle. That is no way for a relationship to form, let alone last.”
“I hadn’t thought about doing something like that.”
“Don’t we owe it to ourselves to look at every possibility? Calum may have had some ideas about our future in his mind, but we are hopefully sentient beings who have minds of our own.”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Let’s sleep on it. There is no rush because I need to have a job to get my visa, and then, if we decide to sell everything, it is going to take some time. If, and I know that it is a big if, we decide to do it, then we have time to plan a future for ourselves.”
“But… what if we can’t make it together and have no jobs or homes behind us?”
“There will be more than enough money for us to start again on our own. If that means working for another company for a bit, then so be it.”
“You have an incredibly positive view of the world?”
Jak shook his head.
“If I can cut the ties with my father, then I think that you can with yours. Children all over the world rebel against their parents all the time, and so far, the world has not come to an end. Think of all the people who paid for passage from Europe to the USA. Many of them left most, if not all, of their family behind and only had a few possessions with them. A lot didn’t make it, but many did.”
“I’m not like you. Calum was the only family I ever knew. I was four when I was taken by the warlord. Calum bought me four years later. I owe him everything.”
“And he will be with you for the rest of your life. Nothing can take that away.”
“As you say, let’s sleep on it,” said Sarah.
Jak was half asleep when he heard a slight creak as the door to his bedroom opened. He sat up and saw a figure come in and slide into bed beside him.
“Sarah?”
“Lie down and relax,” she said in a soft voice.
She cupped him from behind and wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. At first, he was tense, but gradually, he relaxed.
Before they knew it, it was morning. While they had slept together, sex hadn’t been on the menu.
“Thank you for just lying there last night,” said Sarah as she prepared breakfast.
“Being with you was more important than anything else,” replied Jak.
“You mean sex?”
“When the time is right, then it may happen. Unlike many men, sex is not uppermost on my mind every minute of the day.”
“Is that related to you wanting to live as a woman?”
Jak shook his head.
“Not just live as a woman. As much as I can, I want to become one in time.”
She didn’t respond, but her body seemed to freeze for half a second.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Sarah sat down and looked at Jak.
“This wish to become a woman… Does it give time for you to father a child?”
Her words threw Jak completely.
“I… I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t think.”
“Typical man. There were times when Calum would act first, and only much later would he engage his brain, except when he was his alter-ego. Then something would kick in, and it was as if his brain was working in a very different way.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Before I came here, I hadn’t dated anyone since High School. Add to that my little secret, and having kids was about the last thing on my mind.”
Sarah took hold of his hand. He nearly jerked it away, but relaxed.
“It is ok, Jak. These things can be worked out in time. We have plenty of that, don’t we?”
“I… I just feel so… so manipulated by Calum.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“A good way, I think?”
“Good. Then, let’s go and take a look at your business empire. It will get us out of the city.”
“Don’t you have a job to go to?”
Sarah smiled.
“Being the boss has a few privileges.”
Jak knew when he was beaten.
Sarah grinned and said,
“You can open that envelope of money and buy me lunch… can’t you?”
Jak tried not to show it, but he enjoyed the trip to Argyle. He wasn’t expecting to have to take a couple of ferries along the way, but Sarah seemed to know where she was going.
While they waited for the second ferry to a place called Tarbert, Sarah said,
“Why don’t you book us somewhere to stay tonight?”
Jak hesitated.
“What’s wrong?”
“My credit card is just about maxed out. Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. Just give Mr Mackay a call. He’ll make sure that it is paid off.”
“Don’t tell me… Calum?”
She shook her head.
“When Calum died, Mr Mackay had a Private Eye run a full financial search on you as instructed by Calum in the event of his death. The result of that investigation was that part of the cash on hand that Calum left was to get you out of your financial hole. That applied not only to your student debt but your credit cards as well.”
Jak didn’t look pleased, so Sarah tried a different approach.
“Calum used to tell me about when he arrived in Scotland. He had five hundred bucks to his name. Yes, he had a lot of money, but that was back in the USA, so he invested that, came here and started again. If he failed, then he could go home, cash in those investments and start again somewhere. His first job here was washing cars near the Murrayfield Rugby Stadium and sleeping on the floor of his boss’s front room. With the money he earned from that job, he bought an old VW Bus, and after doing it up, he lived in it for two months. In that time, he built up that five hundred bucks again and again until he was able to pay for an immigration lawyer. That lawyer enabled him to get his British Passport because his grandmother, your great-grandmother, was born here. He told me how he saved his money until he was able to land a job selling Land Rovers in the city. From then on, there was no stopping him. He could talk even the most reluctant customer into signing on the dotted line. The key to Calum’s whole business ethos was that he never had any debt. It took me a long time to get my head around that and to start to follow it. It wasn’t easy, but I got there, which pleased him and was the spur for him to set off on his last journey. That is why Calum left instructions for your arrival. If you came, then one of them was to clear all your debts if Mr Mackay or I felt that you were worth it. I think that you are worth it. Are you up for following in his footsteps?”
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
“Just be yourself. You are so like Calum. He never flashed the cash, and anyone who does that is no friend of mine, and so far, you have been as frugal as him. Call Mr Mackay, and he’ll get that card all paid off tomorrow.”
“But the charges for using it here are stupid.”
Sarah laughed.
“What did I say? Get it paid off and then cut it up, or at least put it away until you go home. I’m sure that Mr Mackay will have some more of Calum’s wisdom to share for this very situation…”
Then she grinned.
“Then, I’ll use the company credit card…” said Sarah with a smile.
The more Jak was with her, the more he liked her attitude to life, even if he kept putting his foot in his mouth.
[to be continued]